


As Snowdrops in Midwinter

by catwalksalone



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5197685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catwalksalone/pseuds/catwalksalone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It was four months and twenty-two days after Robbie left that the end came. </em>
</p>
<p>Spoilers for S9</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Snowdrops in Midwinter

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to soupytwist for sterling beta work and being a sucker for spoilers.

It was four months and twenty-two days after Robbie left that the end came. Successive strokes had sunk his father back into the dependency of a baby with the body of a frightened old man until all that was left was a tired heart pumping blood round a shrunken shell, an imprint of who he had once been. It had been unbearable to watch, but James had done it anyway. For his father, for Nell, for himself.

Back home, with the scent of hospital chemicals still lingering on his clothes, James picked up his phone and dialled. It wasn't the first time he'd done it these past few months. Not the first time he'd heard the prim woman at the end of the line apologise that the person he was calling was unable to take calls at this time and to please hang up and try again. Usually he did hang up before he was unceremoniously beeped through to voice mail that would never be picked up. This time he let it go, listened to the echo of silence as it unspooled around him, drew a sharp breath and, against his better judgement, said, "Robbie." 

His voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears, edged and layered and liquid, and he fumbled the phone off, thick fingers too clumsy to end the call any other way. James let the phone fall, leaning forward and pressing his index finger and thumb into his eyes. There was nothing to cry about. The last shreds of Philip Hathaway had been stripped from his bones by the first set of strokes and James had made his peace with that. This was a release, a relief of care and duty and sore throats from long nights of reading aloud. _We don't do that,_ James had said, and held onto his father's hand anyway as he faded out of life, all struggle and fight lost somewhere amongst the torn up roads and dead ends of his ravaged brain. Really, there was nothing to cry about. He wept all the same.

Nell took over the funeral arrangements. She'd rather be busy than still, she said, and besides James had work to do. Lizzie pulled the sympathetic face he'd seen her use on victims and witnesses of the regular horror shows Oxford seemed to offer up. James was neither of those things, and so he refused to meet her eyes, swiping a folder from his desk and flipping it open. The letters danced on the page, making no sense. "What have we got?" he asked before she could begin on the platitudes. He'd heard them all, he'd said most of them, and they never fit quite right, too small to cover up the spaces left behind. To give the woman her due, she took the sideways swerve like a professional, stepping in close and reeling off the facts of the case without missing a beat.

"Right," said James, "Where do we start?"

Ten days later and James sat on his bed to tie his laces, a brief flash of purple visible between the hem of his trousers and his shoes. He'd started wearing purple as an act of defiance when he was still in the seminary. Defiance against what he'd never been entirely sure, but he'd kept on doing it even when there was nothing left to be defiant about. Perhaps he simply liked the colour. But now here he was, about to put his father to rest, and the well-catechised Catholic in him was whispering that purple serves to remind the faithful of the suffering and pain of our Lord, to remind them to mourn and be penitent. Maybe he didn't choose purple after all; maybe it chose him.

The car would be here soon. James picked up his jacket and brushed at its shoulders. The doorbell rang, the shrill tone cutting through the heavy silence and making him wince. He slipped on the jacket, straightening the cuffs of his sleeves to precise lengths. Downstairs, Nell would be organising the flowers. They'd asked for donations, but his father had always been fond of roses. James felt in his breast pocket for the sturdy, familiar shape there, the old leather and rounded corners smooth under his fingertips. 

There were footsteps on the stairs. Familiar. Not Nell's. He kept his hand on the book and bent his head. The door opened and James watched a pair of polished black shoes cross the room towards the bed. The mattress sagged as his new companion sat down next to him.

A profound relief swept over James, bringing life to cold fingers, dissolving the black ball of anxiety that had lurked under his ribs for months now. For five months and one day, as it turned out. It left him limp and wrung out and with a laugh rising in his throat that he swallowed down. Whether this was out of respect for his father or for his own appearance of sanity he couldn't be certain. The laugh fizzed in his stomach and James raised his head, carefully not looking sideways.

"How did you know?"

"How'd you think?"

"Lizzie?"

"That's the one. You could have told me yourself, you know."

"I called."

"Which number?"

"The usual."

"Well, that's no good, is it, for New Zealand?"

"Guess not." Don't listen to your messages, James wanted to say. I don't want you to hear me like that. Not again. Instead he said, "You didn't have to come." 

"Soft lad," Robbie said, bumping James's arm with his shoulder. "Of course I did."

"Isn't Laura angry you came back early?"

"She rearranged the ticket."

"Oh."

The conversation lapsed and the two men sat in comfortable English silence, close enough for James to bask in the warmth from Robbie's body. They'd always spoken like this, James realised: their words often inconsequential or layered deep and quiet, encoded with years of embedded conditioning. The reality of the conversation was in who chose the music, a shared beer, the way they wove into each other's personal space without even thinking about it. _We don't do that,_ said James, and held his father's hand anyway. _We don't do that,_ said James and let Robbie fly halfway round the world without meeting his eyes for a goodbye. He turned his head and looked. 

Robbie smiled at him, warm gaze casting him neither as a victim nor witness to horrors, but as the same man he'd always seen. The man James had tried hard to live up to.

He said, "All right, Jim?"

And James said, "I will be."

Nell called up the stairs. 

"Right," said Robbie, getting to his feet. "We'd best get a move on then." 

He held out a hand to James and for a moment James stared at it, unmoving. 

"Are you coming or what?" 

_We don't do that,_ said James, and remembered how his father's fingers had twitched against his in a loose grip. He reached out and took Robbie's hand, allowing him to tug him to his feet. Robbie's fingers curled round his palm, firm and strong. 

"Okay," said James, letting go, curling his own fingers to hold in the brief warmth. "I'm ready."

"Take you fishing after if you like."

"I'd rather have a pint."

"You're on."

James followed Robbie down the stairs. Nell thrust a bouquet at him. "Here, you carry these. I have to just…" She trailed off, looking suddenly small and lost.

"Tell me what you need," said Robbie, touching her elbow to bring her back. James recognised the technique and was grateful for it. He'd employed it himself often enough, but he couldn't with Nell. There was something still too brittle between them, too easy to break.

He looked at the flowers in his arms, yellow roses barely out of bud: his father's favourites. They were beautiful, so delicate yet so full of vibrant colour. Yellow, James remembered, was the colour of renewal and hope, like the sun that rose every day no matter if you grieved or hurt, were ashamed or angry, were alone or lonely. There was always the new day. James watched as Robbie skilfully manoeuvred Nell out of the door and into the waiting car, seeing her respond to his warmth like one of the blooms in his arms, turning her face to him and opening.

Perhaps, thought James, following behind them, he wasn't a purple man after all.


End file.
